And so after banks being unreliable, I guess the next potential project is some SC2 battleships.

Notes : - No guarantee that ill ever finish - Ideas/plans/names can change at any time.

General Gameplay stuff

Compared to the played battleships, I intend to make this battleship map more on the fast-paced style (without being DotA) and closer to customization ideals.

One thing I want to try is to have ships that honestly feel different gameplay-wise from one to another (instead of just having some ability swaps). For example, instead of just having standard ships and caster ships, I would want to be able to have scouts, traders (successful trade trips gives team bonuses), battleships ("standard"), command ships (focus on controlling nearby AI units), carriers (that doesn't suck), casters, etc.

Active Ship and Reserve Ships

At any time, you can only control one ship (active) but you can have multiple reserve ships at the allied computer base. You have to return to your base to swap to your other reserve ships. Any reserve ships gets slowly repaired over time and there is no "super fast" ship healing at base.

Any death is permanent and will force to pick a reserve ship into an active ship. Should you fail to even have a single ship, you will have to wait to rebuild a new one and then go on it. I might allow to pick an ally's reserve ship should he/she agree.

Since you will use multiple ships, it will be in your best interest to know them all or at least 2-3 of them.

Level cap and Ressources

No player have any real money on their own. It will instead be the AI for their own uses.

In fact, the AI will have Research Points and Minerals. Research Points will improve Empire Level and Ship Upgrade Cap. All gets improved over time. Traders who does successful trade trips will improve them faster.

*Research PointsControls Empire Level and Ship Upgrade Cap. Also can allow various side bonuses. For example, allowing Lv1 ships to near-instant upgrade to Lv2-Lv3 in mid-game.

*Empire LevelControls which AI ships (from weakest to most powerful) it can build, how many it can build, etc.

*Ship Upgrade CapAs you upgrade your ships, you will hit a level cap per ship. Until the cap is improved, you will be forced into making new Lv1 ships and upgrade those.

The cap will be probably be relatively mild as to encourage using different ships, avoiding a single overleveled ship destroying everything and avoiding big setbacks if you lose your current ship.

*MineralsAs the AI pops up AI ships over time. It will use minerals to make improved versions instead of regular ones. An AI without minerals will always pop up regular ones instead.

Ship Upgrading

As you upgrade over time, it's a chosen reserve ship that gets the upgrades. It will never your be active ship in mid-space.

Basically, ships normally start at lv1 and has a level based on the upgrades it has (not by kills). For example, you could get twice a +1 range range and your lv1 ship becomes a lv2 one. Remember the Upgrade Cap btw.

I intend to try to allow many generic upgrades to be cross-types (probably everything except ability upgrades) so you could try to make a more offensive scout, a more ranged ship, a barrage frontline ship, etc.

Levels of Cloak and Detection

Another big aspect is multiple levels of Cloak and Detection.

When you take Lv1 Detection, your base detection range will be 9. However if you try to detect an enemy with Cloak, your detection range AGAINST the cloaked unit will be reduced depending on its cloak level.

However, regardless of detection ranges, your minimum detection range will always be 3. This will also apply on Terran Scans usable by many bigger ships.

Trader classUnsure but likely different ones. Some faster, others with cloak, other slower but gives even more bonuses per trip, etc.

Battleship classUnsure of which specifics. Yamato Gun is involved somehow for sure.

Carrier classUnsure of specifics. Also depends if I can make a carrier use multiple types of interceptors.

Command Ship classAs stated, will focus on commanding nearby AI units. Might give buffs to commanded AI ships or even allowing commander-only special abilities on them that they will never cast by themselves.

A commander ship also can call a retreat on AI units so they stay in the AI base to respawn along with the newer wave for a bigger wave.

Other classesThere is the possibility that ultra-powerful but ungodly slow ships could be used. An example could be a huge mothership with 5-10x HP of a Battleship but can cast Recall on allies and other support spells.

In addition of normal upgrades, ships could be eligible to have super upgrades (SU). They will often be the turning point between making a powerful ship of their own class or allow hybrids. With my current ideas, 1 SU can be picked every 10 levels. All ships start with their class-related SU.

Examples :

Scout's starting SU - Mass-calculating Radar : All critical ships (direct ships by players or big AI ships) in the ship's radar range will have a general icon shown on the minimap and have a generic actor shown in-game.

Assassin's starting SU - Shadow Plating : Grants permanent cloak lv1 that doesn't consume energy. The Assassin still need to use their cloak ability to raise their cloak level to be less detected.Note : Cloaked units doesn't show on radars.

Another idea I might implement is the ability to "overcharge" your ship before using "Overchargable abilities".

To be specific, your ship would have a "Overcharge" meter which starts at 0% and you must consume a considerable amount of ship's energy to increase that percentage over time (probably over from 30 seconds to 3 minutes to reach 100%).

The higher that percentage is, the most effective an "Overcharge ability" will be effective. For example, if you have 50% Overcharge and you use an "Overcharge ability", said ability will be at 150% effectiveness and your Overcharge drops back to 0%. In such case, you probably used 175-200% energy to do that.

Thus, you could spec a ship to have better odds to heavily damage enemy foes but not lasting long energy-wise or lacking power but gaining longevity in battle.

Finally, with the ability "Recharge Shields", I imply most ships would be able to recharge Shields and it being a common ability.

For exact final values, we will see. It's possible that all "Overchargable" abilities will only be modified to have like 25-50% base effectiveness and a 50% Overcharge gives a direct +50% (to 75%-100%) and such.

Armor

Armor upgrades are certain to be in some way or another.

One thing I am toying is having two types of life armor you can have different levels of it: - One based on % damage reduction (more or less WC3-style) - One based on subtracting points (SC2-style)

The idea is you could have a lot of % damage reduction but still are vulnerable to minor AI ships with lots of rapid fire dealing low damage, to Carriers' interceptors, to battleships' rapid-fire weapons, etc. Or vice-versa.

As for shields, I am much more likely to plain favor more shield regeneration.

Extra note : The way I am going, I am likely to make life HP a lot more durable than Shields. Shields would probably act more as a big "buffer" of life. For example, a ship could have 25% life and 75% shields, the shields deplete very quickly but the life HP have all the armor buffs to back it up.

Another idea I had in mind is have some sort of time flexibility for upgrading ships (via researches).

Quick Note : Upgrades essentially takes time as the prime cost, resources would only work for a "level capping" mentality as far upgrades are concerned.

It essentially works that way : Let's say you are unsure of which upgrade you want to pick. You take 15 seconds to decide. In most normal cases, you lost that 15 seconds. However, I intend to have a system which you can "bank" those 15 seconds and it will research 10x faster by exhausting 9 of those seconds into a real second.

Example : 1) You didn't research for a whole 60 seconds. You banked "60 delayed seconds".2) You start X upgrade that takes 100 seconds.3) The next 6 seconds, you exhaust "9 delayed seconds" per real second, giving you 60 seconds done in 6 seconds. You still got 6 "delayed seconds" (60 - (9 * 6) = 6).4) You do the rest of the 40 seconds of your research at the usual speed.

If you cancel an upgrade, you recover all seconds spent as "delayed seconds" (ex : a research with 60 secs in regives 60 "delayed seconds" back). Obviously, if you finish an upgrade, it's done.

Then as a next step on this would be to allow to un-upgrade to re-spec your ship or to "scrap" a ship. It can happen that your early game specs for a specific ship simply won't stand up in late game.

As for unupgrading, it's likely to be 15 seconds per upgrade level to un-upgrade. Thus if the upgrade level took 100 seconds, you will recover 100 "delayed seconds" off it in addition of whatever resources it costed.

Considering permanent ship deaths, you are usually better off having "wasted" global time but having the right spec'ed ships.

Notes :- Special Upgrades are likely to be not un-upgradable. If I allow it, the starting Special Upgrades for a ship won't be.- If there are powerful unique ships, odds are you won't be able to un-upgrade below the starting upgrades it had.- The whole thing above could be used to "compact" many lesser ships into a powerful ship if necessary.- Traders might potentially give bonus "delayed seconds" to all teammates on some trade route rewards.

Mucky wrote:Ehh... Probably not the best idea to make a thread about a project that's only just started. I thought of starting a thread myself but I've got barely anything to show as of now.

Permanent ship deaths sounds interesting, although I wonder how that will affect endgame stages.

Hence why I said :

Notes :- No guarantee that ill ever finish- Ideas/plans/names can change at any time.

The idea is more for discussion and such. At worst, the project and thread will just die.

One of my ideas for endgame would be that all players would have at least 2-3 ships and it would be a battle to try to kill the most ships of the opposite end to force them into lower level ships then to win by superiority.

IskatuMesk wrote:He'll finish it, even if it drags his bloodied, battered french body across the searing pits of hell.

Maybe, maybe not. Although, I really want to poke something different than W&M honestly after all this time. Plus I learned more of the editor (behaviors are stackable, you can hide actors on an alliance-basis, etc.) to minimize potential work to do for a battleships map.